Tip: How to fix a bricked Nokia Lumia 920

Some of you in the forums and comments have been noting that you are getting a "bricked" Lumia 920's after doing a reset. The term is technically not correct here as you can revive the phone with a neat little trick. The fix reported so far was just returning the device to the store, which is far from ideal especially if you bought it online. Thankfully, the Windows Phone Central Forumscame through with a trick that should get your bricked 920 back up and running.

The instructions are detailed and concise and include a video to help get you back in the game. Read on to fix it.

Unzip NaviFirm to a directory of your choice.
Install Nokia_Care_Suite_5.0_2012.45.4.5

NaviFirm Directions:
1. Run NaviFirmPlus executable
2. Under Products window scroll down to Nokia Lumia 920 (RM-820) *AT&T Only!!!
3. Under Releases window choose 1231.2109.1242.1001
4. Under Variants window choose your color, in my case for RED i was file (RM-820_NAM_ATT_US_VAR237330_V1_Red (059N5T7)
5. Under files window make sure all the files are selected.
6. Click the Download Button
7. Wait for ALL the files to completely download, the FFU file will be 1.02GB in size.
8. When complete, browse to: C:\ProgramData\Nokia\Packages
9. Create a folder called Products
10. Create a folder called rm-820
11. You should now have a directory like: C:\ProgramData\Nokia\Packages\Products\rm-820\
12. Browse to the NaviFirmPlus folder you extracted
13. Open the FW folder and then the folder of the firmware you downloaded.
14. Copy the entire folder contents and paste it into the C:\ProgramData\Nokia\Packages\Products\rm-820\ directory.

Nokia_Care_Suite_5.0_2012.45.4.5 Directions:
1. Launch Nokia Care Suite
2. Click the Product Support Tool for Store 5.0
3. Click File
4. Click Open Product
5. Choose RM-820 (Nokia Lumia 920)
6. On the bottom left click Programming
7. Click Recovery
8. You should see the firmware you downloaded and copied earlier under the Properties field.
9. Click Start
10. The software will check the package contents, it will fail to find the phone, and ask you to reboot and give you a button to click retry.

Phone Directions:
1. Plug the phone into your PC
2. Hold the Volume Down and the Power button, click RETRY on the Product Support Tools Window
3. After you feel a vibration in the phone immediately release the Volume Down and the Power button and hold the Volume up button.
4. Continue to hold the volume up button, you will see the software say "Rebooting"
5. After about 15 seconds you will see a top NOKIA logo and the software will start flashing the phone.

We ourselves don't have any bricked 920's to try this on, but if you find yourself in a similar situation and are about to return the device, give it a shot and let us know if it works for you. Big shout out to itxjobe for doing this for the community.

Hi. In your tutorial you assumed everyone knows how to use NaviFirm (which seems to require a paid subscription). The NaviFirm bit of your tutorial seems to be completely missing. From there the rest is useless.

My 920 froze so I was doing a hard reset and now it won't turn back on. I have tried everything! When you try to soft or hard reset, it vibrates, but nothing happens. I downloaded the Nokia App for Windows to help fix it but it just kept telling me to Soft Reset and couldnt find the phone. What else can I do? Anyway to fix it by opening the phone up or something?

Now when Nokia has closed their firmware from public access, they still had opened a new possibility to reflash - and hopefulkly unbrick - your phone. It's called Nokia Software Recovery Tool and it is official and legal way to flash your phone to the latest official firmware. It should keep your warranty valid, unlike all those other tools (Nokia Care, Nokia Updater etc.) which are not meant for end-users.

My wifes Lumia 920 had started failing in numerous ways (didn't keep a charge, wouldn't get text messages). After hard booting it, the problems still occurred. Finally, I tried resetting it, but it bricked. We took it to the AT&T store, and they tried resetting it. They failed, then told us we were out of luck (it was out of warranty). They wanted us to get a new one. Yea right. So, I put her SIM card in an old iPhone so she'd have something to use, then proceeded to try the procedures outlined here. I had to download the cache file mentioned in the comments (huge thanks) since Nokia is protecting access to it's web services now. After following the instructions, (almost... see below) it has a new flashed ROM and seems to be working fine. It's charging now and I think we may be back in business.

The small issue with the instructions was that the procedure in the phone directions:

3. After you feel a vibration in the phone immediately release the Volume Down and the Power button and hold the Volume up button.

Wasn't exactly right. It didn't work initally, but it worked after I followed the instructions in the app, which said to hold down the 'volume down' and the power buttons, *then* click the reset button after the phone vibrated. No need to hold volume up.

Thanks for this! I was having trouble with my white 920 and the Nokia rep I talked to had me reset it which ended up bricking the phone. I followed these instructions and now my phone works again even though all of my data was wiped. The only issue is that NaviFirmPlus no longer connects to Nokia servers but you can find a cache file online which allows it to work.

this solution sucessfully worked for me. I must confess it took me at least 2 hours. users really needs to be techsavvy to succeed with this troubleshooting. Manufacturers needs to make process like this one to be really simple. Nowadays Consumers are too busy to spend time for advance troubleshooting like this one.

NB: I was using the navifirm and add issue to connect to the dowload server to download the RM-820 for my 920.
I found that it was related to the "cache" ... apparenltly Microsoft/ nokia is now blocking this process...and in another forum an user provided a good solution by providing a kinda cache that helped mresolve the issue to allow the rom to be downloaded.
My 920 is now back in track, I saved my time and Rogers time by self repairing my phone to avoid the haslle to go through exchange/ repair

Hi guys,
I've a Nokia Lumia 820 who is bricked and have nothing displayed on screen, no spinning gears, no lighting... So I've tried the step here and the Nokia is detected by Windows (tried on 7 x64, 8 x64, and a XP VM), but strangely detected and no detected (like plug-in and plug-out) and then the Volume Down + Power don't do anything.
Some one have idea to make my Nokia working again... (i've an old iPhone for now... help me please ! :D)
Etienne

if you sucessfully downloaded the rm-820 (rm 820 in my case for the 920)with Navifirm and created the folder underC:/programdata... sucessfully.
then you are stuck at this part when using the nokia suite:Phone Directions:
1. Plug the phone into your PC
2. Hold the Volume Down and the Power button, click RETRY on the Product Support Tools Window
3. After you feel a vibration in the phone immediately release the Volume Down and the Power button and hold the Volume up button.
4. Continue to hold the volume up button, you will see the software say "Rebooting"
5. After about 15 seconds you will see a top NOKIA logo and the software will start flashing the phone.

Spinning Gears after hard reset
This woked for me:
I let my phone die, took out the sim card puuged in my phone (to the wall) let it charge for about 10 mins after the spinning gears came back up. I unpluged it did a reset by holding the voulme down button and power button when the Nokia came on the screen i used volume down then power then camera. After that I did the rest again but this time i pressed the volume up then volume down then the power than the volume down. pluged my phone back in and about 10 mins later the gears were gone and I had a sim card error message. I shut the phone off normaly put the sim card in turned on my phone and it works. I hope this can help someone.

I PreOrdered my unlocked Nokia Lumia 920 black online from expansys. It started with reboots after a few weeks, but at that stage it was a known problem reported by WPCentral, so I did not worry about it, because it will be fixed with an update. The update came and has gone and still the reboots. Sometimes it reboots and as soon as its ready it reboots again, sometimes an hour later, once a day, or a few times a day. Last week all the tiles stopped updating, and I noticed a few people reported the same problem. I decided to reset using the phone reset option under settings, and that's where the fun started. It got stuck in the gears screen for hours, like other people experienced. After finding this article on how to fix a bricked phone, I followed the instructions, but downloaded the update for Vodafone Australia, which is where I find myself. The update was as described, me holding my breath, not sure what will happen when it restarts. Will it work on Vodafone in Australia? Well it works like a dream, and since I have done the update about a week ago, no reboots, and get this, to my surprise I also now have GDR2 on my phone. Awesome!!!
Thanks to WPCentral and all posters!

mine got into that loop, showing gears and wont start no matter what i'v done, i tried all things people worte here
no luck. then i plugged it to my laptop which i was update with him my phone before (the packege was there already) and use the "Product Support Tool For Store" and it worked, it also gave an option to recover back or to install fresh and clean OS, i use the recovery option

Like most my phone was stuck on the gears after a factory reset. I left it alone for about 4 hours and it eventually died.....so I plugged it in and then googled the situation. It led me here and I tried the key sequence above but it did not work. So I did the whole Navifirm thing and it worked perfectly! I had to get the latest update cache from a different forum post on the xdadevelopers website. just followed the instructions except the release I used was the latest "1314" and it took about 5 minutes after all downloading was said and done. I should mention that my phone was locked to at&t when I got it and I unlocked it for use on Rogers in Canada. This procedure did not re-lock the phone and it is still unlocked and works perfectly. Still pretty ridiculous how a factory reset can brick your phone tho.

People, there is a better way that I posted above. No more programming. Have a look at the below-copied post from another forum.

Normally, it takes only 30 minutes at most to reset it. In the event that it would take longer, like what happened here, you can press and hold both on the volume down button and power key for about 10 seconds.The phone should then reboot. If the phone would still be stuck to spinning gears, here is a hardware reset that you need to press.Input these keys on the following sequence, press them one key at a time:Volume upVolume downPower keyVolume downMake sure that you try this while the phone is charged.

I don't see the Properties field populate any data at the 8
"On the bottom left click Programming
7. Click Recovery
8. You should see the firmware you downloaded and copied earlier under the Properties field."
Downloaded data is in
"C:\ProgramData\Nokia\Packages\rm-820"
Any suggestions ?
Download is RM820_1232.5951.1249.0001_RETAIL_nam_canada_200_01_114967
Thanks

This fix worked great. The only thing that is different is the NaviFirm+ isn't able to download the files any longer since Nokia blocked it. You can find the cache files on Windows Phone message boards to put in the folder, and this allows access to the firmware files needed to flash.

THERE IS A BETTER WAY!
I tried this proposed install, but could never get it right. (All the prompts for Visual Basic this and that, UAC off and on, registry edits, Nokia Care not installing, and other madness.) Then I happened on the below post. And it worked. I had the exact same result as below. Thank heavens!
from discussions dot nokia dot com.

Okay, I contacted Customer Care chat. They said:

Normally, it takes only 30 minutes at most to reset it. In the event that it would take longer, like what happened here, you can press and hold both on the volume down button and power key for about 10 seconds.The phone should then reboot. If the phone would still be stuck to spinning gears, here is a hardware reset that you need to press.Input these keys on the following sequence, press them one key at a time:

Volume upVolume downPower keyVolume downMake sure that you try this while the phone is charged.

When I did this... the gears continued to spin for about 5 minutes, but then the phone restarted and made it back to the "Welcome to your phone" screen. Success!

I can not even begin to thank you enough for this post. I was able to reset my bricked lumia 920 to full functioning. I had a bumpy start getting the software to download, but after somemore investgating, I found my answers, and it worked perfectly.

Hi, My Lumia will either show the spannar logo or nokia logo
Try to do a firmware update, but the nokia suite wont detect my nokia phone,
Am i still able to reset it ?
FYI: When i plugin the usb there is a sound so i guess it is connected, when i look at the device manager there is no ! or ? so i guess the driver is ok

Can anybody help me or give an advice?
I tried to update my Nokia Lumia 920 (RM-821) to 1232.5957.1308.0001 FW.
I tried this with Nokia Care Suite on OS X / vmWare Fusion.
It recognized my phone without any problem but when it started to flash it stopped with an error message and my 920 went power off.
Since then my phone totally bricked. I mean no vibrate, no logo, nothing at all.
Please, somebody help, how can I force to recognize by PC!

Wow - it's incredible that a post on un-bricking the 920 has this many comments, despite what anyone says it is unreasonable for this phone to be bricked so easily. I was told my Nokia customer service to hard reset mine and now it is bricked. This is sad.

Did the same thing for NOKIA LUMIA 810 for T-mobile: phone got stuck on NOKIA logo after battery was pulled during the RESET (seller wanted to get SIM out), worked like a charm with little modifications on model [RM-878]. THANK YOU!

When I try to install Nokia Care Suite, I get this:
"This installation package could not be opened. Contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer Package."
I've tried several support websites to try to resolve this and I've gotten nothing so far.
I'm extremely frustrated.

I had the problem, when you try to turn-on the Lumia 900, it freeze at the screen “rethink possible”, after a while it turns off.
After following the steps showed in this page, the cell phone worked again, this resolve my problem.
The cellphone that I have is AT&T Lumia 900 RM-808, code: 059L6S0.

You have to have your phone unplugged when you start the process. It will then come up with a screen indicating you need to hold down Vol- and Power, at this point you plug your phone in and follow the on-screen instructions.

FOR UK PHONE OWNERS
I fixed my phone (and unlocked it) by using a firmware with a code like: cv_gb_v4. "Country Variant -> Great Britain -> Version 4". I first tried one that said "_v3" but it told me the phone would not update to an older firmware. Makes sense.

FOR ALL PHONE OWNERS
I know this has been said by others, but just to reiterate, I only needed to download "Nokia Care Suite" as you can choose and download the firmware's from there.

First off let me start by Thank you cheesus !!!! this worked perfect and this garbage phone is going straight to Ebay where is will be sold because of such crap device I am going back to the most (boring) but more stable OS in history IOS !!! I have moved around to BB WP7 and WP8 Android and all of them have gave me trouble!!! ecxept for IOS !!! and I hate Apple but I rather not have the headaches !

Great Post. Saved my day. My red 920 finally arrived. After setting it up i tried to performed a Factory Rest on my older Yellow one to sale it to a friend and that bricked it. Know its working again. Thx a lot

This happened to me today when I wanted to restore my 920, so all I did was hold the lock button and the volume up button for a couple second and it came back on and up to the start screen. Hope this helps someone.

Thank you so much for this guide, I'm on vacation and my only phone is bricked. The speaker stopped working so I did a reset to factory default, amazing that this bricks the phone, well done MS and Nokia!
What a disaster of a phone, when I get home I'll go get a Samsung with Android.

I had something similar. I just reset mine (Cyan AT&T version), and I just purchased the Samsung Galaxy SIII. HUGE difference and I love the new Samsung. Much better than the Nokia, except for the camera. I will say that the camera (video and picture) is MUCH better on the Nokia, hands down.
But I can live with that. I hope you get your phone fixed...

The other day, I did a reset on my Lumia 920 that basically got stuck. I had the spinning gears going for a total of 10 hours before I decided that it was a total fail.
Out of frustration, I unplugged the phone and started looking at ways to "unbrick" my phone. My phone still had the spinning gears going while I was doing this. I read articles on how to reflash the phone and such. During this time, the battery finally gave out and died.
I'm not sure why I did it, perhaps out of habit, but I plugged the phone back in to charge it. What happened next was pretty interested. When the phone had enough juice to boot up, it showed me the setup screen. It wasn't bricked at all. Something was apparently just stuck in memory and the power outage basically cleared it out and allowed the setup process to continue.
Hope this helps someone out there.

My boyfriend has a Lumia 920.
It happens that the speech recognition service just cessed working. And, as well, the sound from any recorded video. In order to get the phone well again, he tried to reset it to factory. Bad luck. It bricked. So he went ahead and made this "unbrick" sugestion. It did unbrick, altough using the wrong firmware (we couldn't tell the version, since we are from Portugal and the phone was bought to Expansys from Britain, which by the way, we advise anyone NOT TO). But it happens that the phone is STILL with tha same issue. No sound from video and no voice recognition working. All the rest it SEEMS to be working. Windows Phone is just a big fail, it saddens us.
Anyone with the voice assistant problem or without sound in your recorded videos as well, know this: you're going to have a nasty time. Nokia hasn't been very helpful to us... And we can't return the phone since it passed the 30 days.
What a pain.

I think this is more the way to go.
My 920 was stuck at the spinnig wheels after I did a soft reset.
I'd just the night before updated to 'Portico'. While stuck at the wheels, my phoe started to get very warm.
Out of desperation and frustration, I took it the same day to a NCC and the firmware was reflashed.
Since then, my phone now has the screen brightness issue which it didn't before and the display doesn't seem as sensitive as it used to be.
Just wish I had the patience to wait for the battery timeout as I think that would of cleared it.

I think this is more the way to go.
My 920 was stuck at the spinnig wheels after I did a soft reset.
I'd just the night before updated to 'Portico'. While stuck at the wheels, my phoe started to get very warm.
Out of desperation and frustration, I took it the same day to a NCC and the firmware was reflashed.
Since then, my phone now has the screen brightness issue which it didn't before and the display doesn't seem as sensitive as it used to be.
Just wish I had the patience to wait for the battery timeout as I think that would of cleared it.

Thanks for the steps guys, they fixed a bricked Nokia 920 acquired during the Microsoft BUILD 2012 conference. I had a few notes on the process:

1) I was unable to find the product that matched the original state of the device. So under NaviFirm Directions I chose release: 1232.2109.1242.1001 and variant: RM-820_NAM_ATT_US_VAR237330_V1_Black (059L848)

2) After installing Nokia Care Suite 5.0 version 2012.45.4.5, do not update it. When updated the Product Support Tool for Store 5.0 will prompt for a Nokia Care username and password.

3) Under Phone Directions step 4 was unnecessary.

After successfully flashing the phone, a block of AT&T apps are installed. It's missing a few apps and many of languages from the original BUILD version, but the phone works great.

IT WORKED! Bricked my phone when doing a hard reset and followed these instructions step by step and it worked. In other words if your phone is bricked and you try this and it doesn't work, you did something wrong because mine did. Thank you oh so much for going through the hard work of finding this and uploading it for all of us WP8 users out here, you just saved me another 7-10 days without my phone.

Thanks so much for this guideline. Brilliant! I've just resurrected my 920 now after resetting the phone via the Settings menu earlier this morning.

One quick note on Nokia Care Suite 5.0 (2012.40.5.8) I downloaded thought...it doesn't have Lumia 920 on the Product list. Luckily the Application Launcher offers the software update to this Nokia Care Suite, so I got now the 2013.1.3.4 in my desktop, apparently with Lumia 920 listed.
The flashing went well with no drama, and I have the phone back alive again.
Thanks again for the article. Very much appreciated.

I have a Nokia Lumia 920 locked to AT&T (USA) it is not Bricked, is there a ROM in the NaviFirm package that is Carrier free? at least one that is unlocked . Can I flash my cell phone even though it is not Bricked?
How can I check my current Firmware on the phone?
THanks
Jawahar

Excuse my ignorance i am a new wp user after giving up on ios for almost 5 years of use, I bought a new lumia 920 from ksa where it's my current residence but it seems that lot of things were blocked like I can't get nokia music and lot other valuable stuff, can I flash my phone to any other country where i can find all features and apps available?
And if I do that which firmware/country should I pick from navifirm to download? And does this voids my warranty?
i am using firmware revision number :1232.2109.1242.1002 (without 4g enabled)
Please help

This thread just saved my phone - you guys are the best! Thank you to the author and all the valuable input by posters in the comments!
...and I guess you can add Danish Lumia 920's to the list of phones that can be recovered in this way.

Worked after about 10 go's :P Had the wrong software version at first! Make sure you get the 2012 v5 and if using win 8 while installing make sure to run in previous windows compatibility mode. UK EE uses rm-821 rename the folder to rm-821 and follow the other steps! Thanks for the support WPCentral

Thank you, thank you. I have a live phone again. Whetever you do, don't try to upgrade the Phone tool to the latest 2013 version. It asks for a username, obviously to stop people like us from fixing our phones. All is well!

I got this to work on my Lumia 920. At first it errored out when plugging in the phone saying no driver was loaded for NOKIA BOOTMGR. I then loaded all the drivers under Nokia Care / Drivers.
Worked on the very next try, took a few min and then said complete.The phone showed a low battery with a plug blinking on it. I pluged it into the ac adapter and left it a lone for a few min and the screen came up to the fresh setup screen.
Also I downloaded my rom through the Nokia Care Suite.
Hope this info helps.

Hi,
First of all thank you for the instructions, worked like a charm, though I want to share a my XP and hope it will help some others.
1. I totally failed doing this in my Windows 7 (I've tried everything but the "programming" link never got activated.
2. I worked perfectly on my second Windowx XP system. "Peanuts to be honest"
3. On windows XP the most critical folder is located somewhere else; on the intructions above; tells us the windows 7 location as: "C:\ProgramData\Nokia\Packages\Products\rm-820\ " where in Windows XP this location is: "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Nokia\Packages\Products\rm-821"

Hi, First of all thank you it has been really very useful and saved me a bunch of pain..
I would like to share my XP as well make some additions and hope it will help a few people to sort it out.
1. I wasn't able to get this done on my windows7 PC, "programming" link never got active and I've tried everything.
2. It worked like a charm on my Windows XP PC.
3. Also another important thing while doing with Windows XP is, the critical folder "Packages" is mentioned above is located in windows 7 : "C:\ProgramData\Nokia\Packages\Products\rm-820\ " ; where its totally somewhere else in windows XP: "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Nokia\Packages\Products\rm-821".

Hope this helps for the ones, which wanna give a try with windows XP, who failed on windows 7.
Cheers,

very useful indeed. My phone (Lumia920) was stuck for 45' in the reset process so I decided to hard-stop this and applied the procedure as described. Not only my phone was properly flashed, but the restore process went smoothly and all my apps have downloaded gradually. I just had to re-enter my email boxes passwords.
However, I may have installed the wrong version as 13 downloads remain pending and return an error code 8000ffff. Will try to sort this out in the coming days.

Thanks for the guide. Works good if you FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS. :) (I like to go rouge once in a while.) I updated the Nokia Care software using the update tool and nothing worked right after that. For those of you following along at home, use the version in the link. I had the newer rom from ATT but the install/upgrade didn't seem to go well so I wanted to reflash. I used the rom that Nokia Care downloaded in combination with the rest of the steps provided here. One last note, during the phone set up it asked if I wanted to restore the old settings or start fresh. I chose start fresh since that was the purpose of the exercise. Just thought I'd mention it incase anyone else experienced this was well.

Thanks for this guide, worked perfectly with RM-821 Sweden and black for me, why do Microsoft create so poor software that a normal reset bricks their own OS? It's so very stupid, and I feel sad for all users who are forced to send in their phones because they can't fix it.

It's not working for my Lumia 510, though supported by the Nokia Care Suite version. Did the same steps but keeps on failing to reflash. I assume 920 and 510 both share the same buttons to work on with the procedure. Any help?? Thanks..

Been doing this for my bricked 820. I scootted around until ifound ATT US 820, but when i got to the open product part in nokia suites, i couldn't find one for the 820 or even the 920? Just 800, 900, 710, and 610?

If done like me when you open add or remove programs you should have 4 Microsoft Visual C++ in the list.

Right click the Nokia Care Suite, go to properties then compatibility.﻿ Set compatibility to XP SP3, press ok, then right click and press install. You shouldn't get that error and it should now install.

This was a total lifesaver :) You just hacked my phone :) Thanks a lot!!!
I have no idea how my phone got bricked, I took it out of my pocket to check the calendar, and the screen was just dead....
I really didn't think any of this would work, was very, very surprised when I felt the small vibration upon holding down volume and power!!!!
awesome! :) :) :) :)

I'm a long time iphone user and thought I'd try Lumia, only to find out my Lumia 920 was "bricked" the moment I got it home. This fixed it!! Thanks a ton for the article and loosk like I found my new resource website! Thank you

My 920 is caught in an endless boot loop due to low battery. Any guidelines on how to get this process to work in this instance?
When I click Retry, it seems to start doing something, then the phone reboots again and the computer and phone lose connection. If I hold the Volume Up button, it will cycle through indefinitely, every time I click Retry. Leaving the phone plugged in, sometimes a Nokia logo appears, sometimes a huge low battery icon appears (as if charging), and sometimes an AT&T logo (with text "Rethink Possible" underneath logo). That's as far as it gets.
Also, holding Volume Down and Power buttons don't produce expected behavior. The short vibra happens after I release them and it starts to reboot.

Do not install it separately. Let NCS do the job. If it is already installed, I recommend:

1. Create a System Restore point
2. Uninstall any VC++ 2005 runtime package already installed.
3. Install NCS and restore your phone.
4. Restore your PC to the System Restore point so that you can have your original configuration back.
Don't forget the run the application as administrator.

I had a phone brick itself in a hard reset, and this is exactly what I needed to do (though I wish I had seen your post):

Uninstall all versions of the VC++ 2005 that you have installed except version 8.0.59193. This is the version that the first dialog gives the link too.

Install .NET Framework 4.0 that it links too (I suspect any version of this will do however).

Download the firmware using the provided tool.

Plug the phone into a USB 2.0 port--plugging into a USB 3.0 left it undetectable by the software.

Follow the rest of the steps above.

I suggest that you either have a restore point, or you go and install the latest versions of the VS 2005 runtime (to avoid system vulnerabilities) after unbricking your phone, but the installation software is clearly targetting a specific version of the VC++ 2005 runtime.
By the way, simply due to the type of installer, this entire process is limited to Windows (for anyone that wants to do this on a Mac).
For those that did not install it: the installer does not automatically install the VC++ 2005 SP1 runtime that it wants, but it does provide a direct link to get it. Similarly, it does not install the required full installation of the .NET 4.0 framework, but it does provide a link to that as well.

WOW, THANK YOU. I was unable to recieve text messages so I followed the directions on nokia for reseting to factor default and my phone got stuck on the gear screen. Then Holding down power, wolue down and camera to do a hard reset made it stay on nokia logo screen. Followed the directions above and my Lumia 920 works again Woot. Still cant recieve texts but I think that is a sim problem.

In the evening with about 15% charge left on my 920 I was waiting to see when it would shut down automatically. Instead it hung with the home screen showing. I tried every combination of buttons but nothing woke it up. I figured the lit display would eventually run down battery till dead. Went to bed hoping it would be really dead an cold by morning. It was and when I plugged in the charger it responded normally with a boot. I typed in the PIN and it came back normally and has been working fine for a whole day since. I think letting the battery go really dead acted like removing the battery which allowed a full reset. I'm optimistic nokia/Microsoft wil have a fix upgrade soon. Love the phone.

Hi,
I wrote the tutorial, I had to update the source for the files because dropbox banned me, I will email the editor and have him update the hyperlinks in my article.
You can grab the new links from the forum post however, it is linked on the bottom of this article or in the Lumia 920 forums it is stickied.
~itxjobe

Been doing this for my bricked 820. I scootted around until ifound ATT US 820, but when i got to the open product part in nokia suites, i couldn't find one for the 820 or even the 920? Just 800, 900, 710, and 610?

... how did i manage to brick my phone 5 hours after this was posted? I was trying to reset because i was having an issue with my stereo bluetooth headset, and the Lumia 920 not playing nice anymore. I reset, but little did i know it was gonna turn into a 3 hour headache...

Backup and Restore works awesomely by the way...
well... 5 of the 50- something didn't install, and then i encountered the reBuy store glich on PhotoLock

My phone just stopped working last night. Had plenty of charge, so I just happened to try the power volume down button and it started up right away. So far so good not sure what made it just stop working.

AFTER selling my BUILD 920 phone on EBAY, I just bricked it when I performed the reset. I couldn't find the firmware RM-820_nam_canada_246, but I was able to install the Rogers RM-820_nam_canada_200, and the ATT RM-820_nam_att_100 firmware. The Rogers firmware would not read my ATT SIM, but the ATT Firmware was able to read my ATT SIM.

hi, my 920 is having some issues, so I´m trying to upgrade it. it shows rm-820_nam_att_100 in the model, and I noticed you tried to use that firmware,
I have not been able to find it. can you send me the details on where to find it? thanks!

Yes, it can. But it will turn your phone into a locked AT&T phone (I had to reset mine, it bricked). I just installed the AT&T firmware and now my SIM is not recognized. Does anyone in here have access to the firmware for the BUILD 2012 phones?

Its funny I bricked my first phone when I returned it. I did a wipe of the memory and it stood with the cogs spinning for 25 min. I decided to just hard reset and all that would happen was it would light up Nokia and do nothing. I got the replacement and did the exact same thing to it as well. Haha. The att guy was new so he said it was just a bad batch. I don't even think he understood what I meant when I said its bricked... but they game me a second replacement right after. I can't believe I bricked to phones.

I don't think there's NCS for mac. And for those on Windows - last time I used NCS it was necessary to run driver setup from the folder where NCS got installed, for the WP7 phone to be properly detected (that may have changed with WP8, I dunno).

This is helpful for me, because even though I have a locked AT&T Lumia 920, I bought mine online through Ebay. Thankfully I'm not experiencing any problems worthy of a hard reset, but if I do and my device bricks, I'd much rather fix it myself than go through the hassel of back-and-forth email and regular mail. Plus mine is yellow... fat chance of finding a replacement to exchange in-store.

First , thanks for the detailed info, I'm right now in the process.
my 920 came ok, drained battery and now will not charge or boot, will just show for a few seconds the nokia logo and hangs there. I'm told its a known boot loop issue where the power is not enough to boot.
anyhow, I'm ok with flashinga new rom (if this works), but mine is from microsoft's confreernce, unlocked to everything, if I flash through these instructions I get a locked at&T phone? can I then reflash with an unllocked version that fits my country?
thanx,
-t

First , thanks for the detailed info, I'm right now in the process.
my 920 came ok, drained battery and now will not charge or boot, will just show for a few seconds the nokia logo and hangs there. I'm told its a known boot loop issue where the power is not enough to boot.
anyhow, I'm ok with flashinga new rom (if this works), but mine is from microsoft's confreernce, unlocked to everything, if I flash through these instructions I get a locked at&T phone? can I then reflash with an unllocked version that fits my country?
thanx,
-t

In the NaviFirm list, there are downloads for many countries. If you do get your drained battery issue resolved, please let me know how you did it. Mine is in the same battery-drained-endless-boot-loop brick state right now, and I'd love to fix it.